I am doing some kicking around of both GNOME and GNOME-Shell (the preview of the upcoming GNOME 3.0) mostly in preparation for the release of openSuSE 11.3 in search of an alternative desktop (I plan on keeping KDE as my primary desktop, as it is now). GNOME-Shell has proven to be a very solid alternative to “standard” GNOME (despite that I haven’t managed to get multimedia apps, other than brasero, to work). Quite frankly, I had serious doubts about GNOME-Shell (as an alternative to GNOME or even as an alternative to KDE); however, I am finding that those doubts were unfounded (at least on 11.2).
Here’s what I’ve picked up so far;
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Like the full-fledged GNOME itself, GNOME-Shell pretty much requires compiz-fusion and full compositing support to run (or look) decently (which also, in most cases, pretty much makes either of them a non-starter with 11.3 and AMD hardware newer than HD4xxx; however, because the proprietary AMD drivers from the ATI repo work just fine with 11.2, this version does not have that issue).
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GNOME-Shell takes only rudimentary hints from the full GNOME; by and large, other than those hints, it looks, or acts, little like it.
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GNOME-Shell performs better than the KDE 4.5 RCs (either of them) on 11.2; this is a definite problem if, like me, you normally prefer KDE.